Use Recruiters With Lasers

Recruitment has changed…is it for the better?

Recruitment has changed. Permanently. Fact.

With the dawn of the ‘Covid-era’ a new breed of recruitment was born, particularly in sectors such as industrial and volume, whereby registering several local candidates in a local office, manned by local recruiters became nigh on impossible. Recruitment agencies were forced into leveraging pre-existing (and new) technologies to ‘remote-register’ candidates.

This combined with less and less work seekers travelling to the UK for employment has put an unprecedented strain on sectors such as FMCG and logistics/warehousing (Supply Chain).

Leveraging technology has, when done correctly enabled recruiters to have a wider reach in their local communities to try and help find work for each jobseeker out there, but one thing that technology does, and does well, is remove the ‘human-touch’ from the whole process. ?It’s this human-touch that is in desperate need of revitalisation within the recruitment marketplace. As we head into ‘peak’ for the run up to Christmas it will be the agencies that leverage this to their success that will come out on top.

Too often candidates feedback is along the lines of

?“I feel just like a number”

with This is where having a laser focused strategy on candidate attraction, heading into peak will pay dividends giving a synergy between technology and humanisation of the recruitment process.

‘people only buy from people’

so it makes sense that

‘people only want to discuss jobs with people’

rather than a computer, or an automated system.

As we head to peak, and candidate shortages will only get worse we will see pay rates increasing more and more (￡50k+bonus plus being thrown around for class 1 drivers) , more time spent trying to source candidates and more ‘man-hours’ injected into the process so it makes sense that the cost of recruitment also increases with this…correct..?

Well…not always.

Whilst we all have margins to work to, one thing that seems to have not changed is the recruitment rat race to the bottom, with some agencies quoting rates in the region or 30p per hour margin (I know right..!)

Recruitment has changed. Fact.

It’s the agencies that can create the synergy between technology efficiencies and the human-touch, supplying clients who ‘get-it’ and by this I mean they understand the challenges, understand their local competition for employment and more importantly utilise an agency ‘partner’ rather than taking on board multiple ‘waves’ of agencies (in the hope that using 7 agencies will fix the problem of their minimum wage, no over-time, no bonus, heavy lifting, poor working environment warehouse) ??that will come out on top come January.

If you’re an agency, do you have this laser focus?

If you utilise agencies, does your supplier (see I told you you need recruiters with lasers)?

Because come November, if they/you don’t then what will peak look like to you..??